if it sounds too good to be true
it usually is to good to be true !
Lots of people have used the Internet for a long time as a tool to get information about prices and models of cars. For many years there have been Online Vehicle Trade sites like Autoscout24, Mobile.de, eBayMotors and more general ones like Craigslist and even small local web portals.
In Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, prices of used cars increased dramatically due to the high demand from the former Warshaw Pact States.This plus rumors that you can make fantastic deals and find amazing bargains on the Internet has increased cases of Advance Fee fraud since 2001. Certain Online Auction sites introduced an Escrow Service Solution as a means to secure high priced transactions and thats where scammers jumped right in by creating thousands of fake escrow and shipping sites.
Strangely enough this has been going on since over 10 years and nothing is being done. Each night, when it gets dark in Western Europe, the gangs mainly from Romania place their thousands of fake advertisements on the car selling web-portals. The fraud-offerings are usually very easy to spot: unrealistic prices and email address on freemailers, embedded inside the pictures. As soon as the employees of mobile.de and autoscout go home in the evening, the gangs place their virtual cars on the websites. The next morning most of their scams are deleted, only to re-appear the next evening! This has been going on since years and the seemingly impoverished owners of the car selling sites can NOT afford to hire personel 24/7 to clean up their servers!
Fraud in vehicle trading is not new. Before the invention of the car, horse dealers tried to sell old mares as new. Similar to these infamous traders, some dealers today try to increase their income by turning back the odometer, conceal accidents and use lots of other tricks to take advantage of inexperienced buyers. You can never be 100% sure but here in many European countries, commercial sellers are obliged to give a warranty which adds some consumer protection.
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Rules of conduct for safe vehicle trading . The Basic Rule : Do not let anybody put you in a hurry. Never make advance payments. |
What are politicians doing? Actions of politicians and law enforcement against Cybercrime. |
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Cybercrime Informations at Wikipedia |
In the News Media reports on Cybercrime
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